Brian Shaw hiring is worthwhile gamble for Nuggets

Denver Nuggets new head coach Brian Shaw, center, is flanked by general manager Tim Connelly, left, and team president Josh Kroenke during an NBA basketball news conference where Shaw was introduced as the new head coach in Denver on Tuesday, June 25, 2013.

If the decision had been left to Kobe Bryant or Magic Johnson, do you think Brian Shaw would be coaching the Los Angeles Lakers now instead of the Nuggets?

The smile on his face and a laugh from his belly were the lone replies Nuggets president Josh Kroenke offered to my irreverent question.

But that said it all, don't you think?

The Nuggets beat the Lakers.

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Relish it. The Nuggets getting over on L.A. goes against everything written in the NBA script, where the glamour spots and big stars always win, or so it seems from the vantage point of Denver, a flyover city in the league.

With Shaw on the bench, can the Nuggets win it all?

In point guard Ty Lawson and forward Danilo Gallinari, does Shaw have enough talent for a championship?

"I do think the Nuggets have the talent," Shaw said Tuesday.

This is no knock on the 1,131 regular-season games George Karl won during his distinguished NBA career. But why is he no longer the coach in Denver?

Although the reasons ranged from a squabble over a long-term contract to the inability to develop center JaVale McGee into a force in the paint, the bottom line can be described in 10 succinct words.

"You get judged on what you do in the playoffs," Shaw said.

The Nuggets gambled on giving the 47-year-old Shaw his first gig as a head coach, an opportunity never afforded him in Los Angeles, despite winning five championship with the Lakers as either a role player or an assistant coach to Phil Jackson.

The Nuggets took the risk on Shaw to see if he can develop Lawson, Gallinari and McGee as the core of a legitimate championship contender over the next five years. It's a project Shaw, with a solid reputation for relationship-building, might be better suited to complete than the 62-year-old Karl, recently described to me by Kroenke as a decorated coach who has paid his dues and prefers veteran players he can trust without fuss.

"Playing an up-and-down style, that doesn't necessarily translate well when you get in the playoffs," said Shaw, hired from Indiana after the Pacers fought and clawed their way to the Eastern Conference finals.

The people understandably angry at Karl's dismissal and stubbornly unforgiving because Kroenke fired the NBA's coach of the year refuse to acknowledge the possibility that after 8˝ years on the job, maybe the way Karl wanted to lead and the direction the Nuggets were going no longer fit.

But, for all our disagreements, Karl and I share skepticism that McGee can ever be more than a 7-foot ball of frustration whose basketball skills fail to match his obvious physical gifts. What's more, I fear Kroenke might be a little too fond of a Nuggets roster that he and former general manager Masai Ujiri built from scratch after trading Carmelo Anthony.

Shaw tells a great story, a tale undoubtedly honed through countless job interviews before he persuaded the Nuggets to hire him, about a sneaker as a metaphor for building a basketball team.

"If you take a tennis shoe, it has a rubber sole and a leather upper, and that is the main part of the shoe," Shaw said. "As trivial as a shoestring is -- you can go a store and buy a pair of shoestrings for 50 cents or a dollar, while the shoes may cost $150 -- but the shoestrings are just as important as the actual shoe."

Shaw is being asked to construct a championship contender in Denver, using little more than Kenneth Faried and shoestrings.

The Nuggets are good for any soul in love with the idea of unselfish, team basketball. But there's a small problem with that romantic idealism.

Five Farieds do not equal one Le Bron James.

When the rubber meets the long road to the NBA Finals, do the Nuggets have too many shoelaces and not enough high-quality leather?

"I've been with the Lakers, who had the best of the superstars. But they still needed the role players to get to the promised land. With Indiana, without any superstars, we didn't win a championship, but we went places I don't think anybody expected us to go. I really believe in the team concept. Of course, it obviously helps if you have the greatest player in the world to bail you out of tough situations," said Shaw, grinning as he thought of a way the Nuggets can climb to the mountaintop.

"You can condition your feet to run a rocky road without shoes, by having tough skin on the bottom of your feet. A lot of runners who win marathons, they grew up running barefoot."